


The Lighthouse

by Tasha Y (ProwlingThunder)



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [177]
Category: Original Work
Genre: A Fisherman's Son, A Lighthouse, Gen, The Edge of the World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/Tasha%20Y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt!Fic.</p><p>A very short short about a boy and his lighthouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lighthouse

The lighthouse marks the end of the world. That's what people always say. The old wives tale is that it stretches on and on and on, an endless ocean of nothing, save for rampant storms. There's nothing out there, they say.

It's not that I don't believe them. When I was a small boy, my father got on a fishing ship and left. I remember watching him from the top of the lighthouse, growing smaller and smaller until the ship was nothing but a speck on the horizon, until it was nothing at all. I know it can take a month or more to find a good spot and get a good haul, but it's been more than a decade. He's not coming back. I _know_ there's nothing out there. Or, at least, if there is: nothing's coming back.

It doesn't change that I wish it weren't true. And it doesn't change the fact that it's really weird to have a lighthouse at the edge of the world, if nothing ever comes back. It doesn't do a lot of good that way.

That doesn't stop me from lighting it during the night and in the fog. It helps the smaller craft come in for the evening, if the candles are burning. It doesn't keep me from sitting on the walk with a spyglass, trying to see my father's ship after ten years lost at sea. Knowing the cold hard facts doesn't keep me from hoping despite everything that just one, just _this one,_ will have a different end to the fable. I think it'd be nice if humanity, not fate and the ocean, won just one of the tales.

It's a fruitless hope and I know it. But it's also an endless hope, like the lighthouse.

It's not much, but it doesn't have to be. Beyond the horizon is the end of the world, for ships and people and the sea, but I refuse to let it be the end of the world for me.


End file.
